Feature Article

Mobility is Hot in 2013

People are exceedingly mobile these days. From the Presidential Election to dating, our lives are being reshaped by mobile devices. We’ve entered an evolving relationship with the idea of being connected to everyone and everything all the time. We e-mail, tweet, post, share and juggle various multimedia tasks constantly, while on the go.

Today, mobility has allowed us to do almost anything, anywhere, anytime.

According to top executives of two global information and communications technology (ICT) companies, fixed-mobile divergence and mobile devices are among the most powerful technology industry trends for 2013.

A previously popular trend toward connectivity between fixed and wireless telecommunications networks, fixed-mobile convergence will soon come to an end, according to Torbjorn Sandberg, CEO at Netadmin Systems, a provider of OSS systems in the Nordics. Consumers and enterprises have lately started to display completely disparate behaviors, needs and payment patterns compared to what can be offered over fixed and mobile access.

“There is only one solution to this demand, and that is to give all consumers and enterprises access to fiber or vectoring. LTE and obsolete technologies will not cut it,” explained Sandberg.

Additionally, the sharing of networks has become a growing trend. In order to meet the future demands of consumers and enterprises, service providers must begin to share the same networks because of the capital needed to invest in the equipment, or because it suits competition conditions and regulations.

As we ring in the New Year, there will also be a focus on advanced Operations Support Systems (OSS).

“It is not enough to lay fiber alone or upgrade to vectoring – an environment is also required in which multiple service providers can thrive and reach the customers simply and easily,” said Sandberg. “Advanced operations support systems are needed to provide support for automated service fulfillment and service assurance not only within an operator but more importantly between operators.”

Today, mobile devices are increasingly overtaking desktops in a shift to a device-driven and faster Internet. In fact, by 2014, mobile Internet usage is expected to exceed desktop Internet usage.

“That means that in 2013 developers and marketers will be hard at work fine-tuning their mobile apps and websites to capitalize on this audience,” explained Sven Hammar, CEO at Apica, a provider of load testing and performance monitoring solutions. “Application testing tools will evolve to support any type of device with dynamic HTML versus device-specific code.”

Additionally, Internet backup will become even more important as companies that utilize hybrid cloud solutions are realizing the need to have a reliable network connection to the Internet from their main headquarters as well as from every local office branch.

Last but not least, is the trend of the ‘social' DDoS attack. Social media has brought a new level of risk to IT departments as a new type of DDoS attack emerges. Now, websites need to be aware of social media-driven attacks that can change traffic levels to 10 Gb/s, 100 Gb/s, or more from real users, according to Hammar.

“Regardless of whether the attack is a malicious hack or a Facebook post or organized tweet, very few enterprise infrastructures can handle this load,” he continued. “Normal DDoS protection will not work. Organizations will safeguard themselves by ensuring their sites can absorb the load in a cloud fashion and by having a well-organized and tested plan of action.”